[OSGeo-Discuss] [Incubator] Should OSGeo accept "benevolent dictator" projects into OSGeo?

[Jonathan Moules]

Wikipedia has a page full of Open Source Benevolent Dictators For Life (BDFL) for very successful projects (Linux, Ruby, Python, Blender, Django, OpenBSD, Drupal, WordPress, Perl) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life
I'm not sure how many have foundational approval, or have the role documented in the applicable organisation's charter but there certainly appear to be a lot of them in the most prominent Open Source projects.


---- On Thu, 05 May 2016 14:56:27 +0100 Jody Garnett<jody.garnett at gmail.com> wrote ---- 

This is not a new conversation; it has been the central work of incubation - which is proving unsuccessful in this case.


It was raised some time ago - I remember heartfelt conversations in foss4g 2013, working on governance model is part of what osgeo incubation is about (it is a bit of the advocacy we do as a foundation with the developer community).

In this case we have failed to convince the project to adopt the open governance model that we focus on as a foundation. Bruce has been very patient on this, allowing time and the positive example of other projects to speak for our approach.


I cannot think of any software foundation that allows benevolent dictator style - since on of the main values of a foundation is vendor neutral governance! Counter example welcome
--
Jody






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